Monday, November 3, 2014

Good & Bad: 'The Walking Dead' (11/2/14)

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Season Five, Episode Four: “Slabtown”

Plot: Short answer is, we found Beth and she’s alive. Long
answer? Eesh.

So, while Beth may be alive, she’s
in a bit of a pickle, pickle in this sense meaning a hospital full of rapists, murderers,
and people pretending not to notice any of the above. All of said people are
dressed like cops and doctors. Some of the cops found Beth fending off zombies
after she got separated from Daryl; they picked her up (in that mysterious car
with the white cross on the back) and bought her to the hospital. Apparently,
as we find out later, things used to be pretty cool at the hospital but then
the old leader made some mistakes and bad stuff happened. As a result, new
leader Lady Cop has put a system in place based on taking and give back. They
saved Beth’s life so she has to become an orderly in the hospital and tend to
the other patients. Not so bad, except occasionally, you have to pay off what
you owe in other, rape-ier ways.

Beth befriends the hospital’s only
doctor, named Doctor or something, who she’s assigned to assist. She also
befriends the kid from “Everybody Hates Chris,” who works in the laundry. Doctor
handles backstory duties and fills her in on the hospital culture; “Everybody
Hates Chris” fills her in on his plan to escape because things there suck.

Then an overwhelming amount of
things happen. Most importantly, I think, a guy comes in that Doctor claims is
a lost cause. Lady Cop insists he save the man. Doctor does so and then orders
Beth to give him some meds. The guy has a seizure and dies and the Doc tells
Beth she gave him the wrong drug.

Beth gets slapped around by Lady Cop
for this, so she decides to join up with “Everybody Hates Chris” and escape. After
narrowly avoiding getting raped by A-Hole Cop by feeding him to a nearby
walker, Beth meets up with “Everybody Hates Chris” and they lower themselves
down an elevator shaft using an honest to god rope made from tied-together towels.
Just when they seem to be home-free, walkers attack them in the parking lot, a
group of cops descends on the scene, “Everybody Hates Chris” escapes, leaving
Beth behind.

After all this, Beth confronts Doctor
and says he intentionally told her the wrong drug to give to the guy. She says
he did this because the other guy was also a doctor which could have made
Doctor expendable. Doctor agrees to all this and basically says “Gotta do, what’cha
gotta do.”

Right before Beth can kill him,
Carol rolls in on a stretcher and everyone is all DAMN!

Thoughts

Bad: This episode, all by its lonesome, had enough story in
it to fuel the “Walking Dead” spinoff for like six seasons. Look at that
fricking plot summary. I didn’t even get to the part where the girl from “Whale
Rider” shows up as a rape victim and gets her arm cut off or how Beth is once
again told at length she’s not fit for this world or how her attempted suicide
from three seasons ago is referenced or the way the cops chuck recently dead
bodies into the lobby full of walkers to keep them happy – and everyone else
trapped inside.

Bad: Too much backstory too. Usually this show is aces when
it comes to backstory. Here, it is an overwhelming, jumbled mess. Everybody
just kept casually, vaguely monologing about the way things used to be like I was
there to see it. I pieced together the backstory, but most of what I got is
from assuming that the hospital is a riff on Terminus: Things were good, a
leader made a mistake, things went bad and in the effort to rebuild a utopia, a
healthy dose of dystopia snuck in.

Bad: There are way too many new characters in this episode.
All these new characters whose names I already didn’t remember kept referencing
other characters by name like I was supposed to know those names too.

Bad: That was exhausting.

Good: This overall episode. It was ridiculously ambitious
and it kept tripping over itself trying to do way too much, but it was a nice
episode.

Good: Love the parallels between the Hospital and Terminus.
Both groups’ attempts to rebuild society started in the same place (“We’re
going to build a utopia!”), but then the world took a dump on that idea and
they each reached the same conclusion: There’s no place for good people in the
world right now. Maybe one day, but right now, good people suffer. So they each
adopted a code they thought would save them. In Terminus it was “You’re either the
butcher or the cattle” and they embraced cannibalism. In the hospital it was “Take
and give back” and they all got used to turning a blind eye towards the
ugliness that could and did bring. The failure of these efforts to rise above
the level of, say, Crazy Joe’s biker gang (a sort of animalistic, proto-society
of claimers) seems to spell bad things for the Grimes’ crew and their efforts
to be decent people in an indecent world. Quoting Two-Face.

Bad: Before the Doctor’s grand plan to kill the dude was
revealed, I had to wonder, just why on Earth anyone would trust the guy’s life
to Beth, who’s basically a total stranger with no real medical background (save
for her vet father, but these people don’t know that). But then we find out he
intended for her to kill him, tricked her and that Beth is actually an expert
medicine-giver/listener.

Bad: I can’t take a rope made out of blankets or towels or
bed sheets seriously. I just can’t.

Good: That shootout in the basement, lit by muzzle flashes.
Bad ass.

Good: I’m a big fan of “Everybody Hates Chris” skunking out
on Beth. I mean, dude at least looked a little guilty about it while he was
leaving her behind. This was also better than the other two options: He dies
helping Beth escape, confirming every other character’s theory that Beth is
just a super-cute, blonde death sentence for those around her. The other option
was he survives and we immediately cut back to the church where Fr. Gabe has a
sudden, massive coronary because rules are rules.

Good: Beth’s little smile watching him escape. Is she happy because
he got away? Or, is she smiling because for once someone used her and her
skills as a stepping stone, proving that she does have value in walker world? I
like to think a little of both.

Bad: Oh my god, despite all the story, I’ve still got questions.
Why was Lady Cop so dead set on Doctor saving that guy? She seemed mostly cold
and calculating throughout, but she really wanted that dude to live even though
he was pretty well f’d. Did she know him? Did she know he was a doctor too? If
she did, why didn’t it come up?

Bad: Beth had a rough go of it this week, which doesn’t sit
well with me. There was the attempted rape by A-Hole Cop, who looked
suspiciously like Seth McFarland, Lady Cop pretty much slugged her every time
she say here, “Everybody Hates Chris” bailed on her. Poor adorable Beth.

Bad: What happened to that dog, by the way?

Bad: How the hell did Beth know the other guy was a doctor?
Did she just piece that together from … what? Thin air, hopes, dreams and fairy
dust? Goddamn, I have a feeling “The Walking Dead” is lucky Beth is cute. If
this had been a Carl episode, I would still be screaming obscenities at my TV
screen.

Good: Carol showing up at the end all passed out and so
forth. She might be unconscious now, but if recent history has told us
anything, she’ll be up and about disguising herself as a cop by wearing his or
her skin like a Halloween costume in like five minutes. Book it.